Batman : L'Encyclopédie des personnages

by Matthew K. Manning

Voici la parfaite encyclopédie pour tout connaître de l'univers de Batman: Robin, Red Hood, Batwoman, Alfred... Tous ceux et celles qui forment sa garde la plus rapprochée.
Humain ou extraterrestre, membre de la Ligue de Justice ou simple flic de Gotham... Tous les plus grands alliés du Chevalier noir. Du Pingouin à l'Ergot, de Poison Ivy à Harley Quinn, sans oublier le Joker père et fille... Tous les plus effroyables adversaires de l Homme chauve-souris.

Genres: Comics, Batman, Superheroes, Dc Comics, Nonfiction, Reference

208 pages, Hardcover

First published February 2, 2016

About the author

Matthew K. Manning is the author of over eighty books and dozens of comic books. He has written books for Scholastic, Disney Press, Abrams, Amazon, Capstone, DK Publishing, Insight Editions, Andrews/McMeel, and Running Press, dividing his time between writing original chapter book series and coffee table books. His chapter books include the six-book series Xander and the Rainbow-Barfing Unicorns (Capstone), the four-book Drone Academy series (Capstone), Backstories: Batman and Backstories: Batgirl (Scholastic), and Artemis Fowl: How to be a LEPrecon (Disney Press), released in both paperback and on Audible. Many of his books have reached best-seller status on Amazon, including DC Comics: Anatomy of a Metahuman, DC Comics Encyclopedia, and Batman: A Visual History. In addition, Manning specializes in comic books, writing for the titles Beware the Batman, Teen Titans Go!, The Batman Strikes!, Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century, Justice League Adventures, Scooby-Doo, and Looney Tunes for DC Comics, Marvel Action: Avengers for IDW/Marvel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Amazing Adventures and TMNT: New Animated Adventures for IDW, and the top-selling Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures for DC/IDW, nominated by the Diamond Gem Awards for comic of the year. Manning’s work has received acclaim in Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and The Washington Times. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife Dorothy and his daughters Lillian and Gwendolyn.

Buy his books and support independent booksellers on Bookshop at https://bookshop.org/shop/matthewkman...

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that will help you with the ever extending 'Batverse' - friends, villains and family are the focus of each single page entry. If you have been away from Bats for awhile this book will help you jump right back into the action. Great book to have as the new Batman movies come out or just as a Bats refresher when new storylines start.

[Sophie Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good looking hardback book, which provides details on some 200 characters associated with Batman ... from Superman, Alfred and Robin to the Joker, Harley Quinn and Penguin.

The pictures are fantastic, and represent the high point of the book. It's fascinating simply to flick through and admire the art work. The details on each character are somewhat brief, and provide no more than an introductory outline. If you think about it, the book is about 200 pages in length - so one page per character (although some - like Batman himself - get more attention than others, as they're discussed on several pages).

Recommended for Batman fans of all ages - especially younger ones!

[Mr. Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Batman Character Encyclopedia is a visual encyclopedic reference book about the characters that appear in the Batman Universe compiled and written by Matthew K. Manning.

Batman Character Encyclopedia is a colorful visual encyclopedia with a full page spread for each entry. Each entry from Amygdala to Anthony Zucco has vital stats in a box: their real names, occupation, height, weight, their base of operations, their power and abilities, and the allies, enemies, and associations. Their entries are short and to the point, giving one point in a separate box and a paragraph length of description with a quote from that character. The characters are grouped into four categories: Hero (Yellow), Allies (Green), Neutral (Red), and Rouge (Blue).

Aside from the encyclopedia and the entries itself, there is a detail index is rather helpful to find out how many times a character appears in the encyclopedia with their own entry bolded. The index becomes rather crucial as surprisingly enough the encyclopedia is not designed in alphabetical order, but order of importance more or less. It is starts off with Batman and ends with The Squid. How the Squid become the least important rouge is frankly unknown.

Manning had down a more than adequate job of collecting the extremely vast information on Batman, his contemporaries, allies, and rouges. It is far from exhaustive, but that would take volumes to do. Having said that I wished that the encyclopedia went more in depth – one paragraph is not enough to get to know the character – just their most basic of facts.

Additionally, the encyclopedia is based mainly on the rebooted version of the DC Universe. Only characters and groups that have yet to appear in the rebooted universe by time of publishing (2016) have their entries from the most recent pre-booted universe. For an example, Dick Grayson was still Agent 37, he is listed under as such, Cassandra Cain has yet appeared in the rebooted universe, and her entry was under Black Bat.

All in all, Batman Character Encyclopedia was wonderfully constructed and illustrated reference of many of the superheroes, super-villains, and teams that is associated with Batman.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun little encyclopedia of Batman & his rogues gallery. The only real downside is that the descriptions are very short (maybe a sentence or 2). Which does give you insight into the character but you would need to look for more info if necessary.

[Ricardo Lui]

does it have most of the characters???????????????????????????

[Alakanani Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few weeks ago one of my colleagues brought this into work for me to borrow after we discovered our shared Batfam/superhero appreciation, so I could, in her words, occasionally flip through it. Being the super chill individual that I am, I finished it that evening and returned it the next day.

I’m not sure if I would recommend this book as the best introduction to the Batfam/Batman characters. It’s very grounded in the DC continuity from the New 52 onwards and sometimes even feels like a way to legitimise that continuity. I would have liked for this to have been a more comprehensive overview of the Batman characters. Just a few examples: Dick Grayson is mainly mentioned in his role as Agent 37, with small throwaway references to his time as Nightwing, Robin, and Batman; Barbara Gordon is Batgirl, with no mention whatsoever of Oracle; Cassandra Cain is Black Bat (small blessings that they didn’t primarily list her as Orphan, I guess), no mention of her Batgirl run; Stephanie Brown is Spoiler, no references to her time as Robin or Batgirl; Helena Bertinelli is listed as Huntress (I was halfway convinced they were going to leave her out entirely considering how the New 52 has treated her), but her entry then focuses on her role as Headmistress in the Agent 37 universe, rather than her (in my opinion) much more iconic role as the Huntress anno Birds of Prey. Speaking of, the Birds of Prey entry was also…..disappointing.

The most interesting pages to me were the profiles on the Batman Inc. characters and those of the Batfam animals. I’m not still not over the fact that they all got official Ally badges on their pages. That’s probably this encyclopedia’s main strength: its visual layout. I liked how every entry often showed a character drawn in different art styles. Ironically, it gives a more comprehensive impression than the textual summaries and fun facts listed on the page, which mostly focused on the character’s suit and gadgets. I did amuse myself a lot with discovering the characters’ heights and one of the great discoveries was that apparently I’m only centimeters shorter than Dick Grayson. Less amusing were some of the weight-height ratios because really, DC? Maggie Sawyer needs to be 59 kg at 1m78 but James Gordon gets to be 76 kg 1m75?? I’m also convinced Manning has no clue what 59 kg actually looks like on a 1m78 frame.

I also liked seeing all the connections between the different characters, and how some of them would, for example, have Batman as a foe but Batwoman as an ally. Plus, I got a little emotional over how the Rogues seemed to be divided into foes of Bruce, Selina, Dick, and Barbara.

And lastly: Barbara being 2 centimeters taller than Dick. Yes.

[Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few days ago I was thinking about some special gift for one young Batman fan. And then I stumble upon something that was absolutely perfect - „Batman Character Encyclopedia“ made by Matthew K. Manning is kind of book any fan would like to have in own collection.

On 200 pages every character from Batman universe you can think of is presented. One big and one smaller color photos of good quality, short info (real name, occupation, height and weight, base, allies, foes, powers and abilities), biography and some trivia can be found.

Though you should not expect lot of details, for the target audience of young schoolchildren the book is absolutely perfect – thick book of high quality, packed with wealth of information is the real eye candy. I managed to find great gift that I can highly recommend.

And of course I took some time to browse through it myself, before I wrapped it up.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description says that the characters are listed alphabetically, but that is not right. They are listed very randomly starting, of course, with Batman. It leads into his Bat family and their allies in Gotham City and spirals out to the villains from the most familiar to the most obscure.

I love that this is so detailed while still being geared to children. Each character has a full chart of vital information and a brief history of their origin. The numerous colorful illustrations make this book a real winner for Batman fans of all ages.

[Diane Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good encyclopedia for kids. Wish they included information about prominent comics/gn's for each character. Each entry has great art but there is no information about where the art came from (which comic/GN, artists, etc.)

[The Brothers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asher (11yo) read.

Dexter (8yo) read.

[Pongsak Sarapukdee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of characters are also in the DC characters book that I already have seen them and the information were the same.

[cauldronofevil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Julia Pennyworth is a character I’ve never heard of.

Black Canary becoming a punk rock singer? Must be the same guys who thought Dick Grayson should be a spy…

Nice to see Lady Blackhawk again. Through time travel of course.

So Bruce Wayne, created Batman Inc. to put a Batman is cities around the globe? And no one put two and two together?!

I always liked “The Knight” and “Squire” - the Batman and Robin of England. Yeah, they were pretty silly, but still somehow cool. Apparently the Squire (a female) took over the Knight role when her partner was killed. I’d love to read those stories! I imagine a Knight & Squire collection would be pretty affordable!

One severe blow against this book is the fact that there are no real-world references to either first appearance or significant appearance of the character in comics. This would be nice to know if I wanted to track down characters I’m unfamiliar. with.

Damian Wayne has already died and been brought back from the dead?! Weak sauce guys.

Why does Thomas Wayne (Batman’s father) have the Robin symbol on his baseball cap??!

Dear god, they’re not keeping the ‘Court of Owls’ thing are they?

But I guess if they’re keeping Spyral and the rebooted reboot of Huntress, they’ll keep anything.

Martian Manhunter’s entry does not mention his super-breath, which according to the JLA Essential book I’m reading is his main power!

If Billy Batson transforms when he says ‘Shazam’ and If Captain Marvel’s name is now Shazam, what does he say when people ask him his name?

I’m glad they re-rebooted Joe Chill back to a common criminal. I do wish they’d reference issues and stories however. I��d love to track down where they did it.

One of Signalman’s greatest strengths is his ability to hack into a city’s traffic system, controlling the traffic lights as he sees fit.

Hush is here of course. I don’t get why he’s still around either. Mediocre story, lame villain.

Apparently Crazy Quilt got an unrecognizable makeover.

It looks like Amygdala got a reboot as well from being a neighbor of Nightwing to a foe of Dick Grayson.

The Red Hood gang story looks interesting. Too bad they don’t reference it.

And it looks like they rebooted the fantastic superhero The Creeper into a far less interesting monster.

Well, as much as I’d like to have a nicely produced DK Batman Character Dictionary this appears to have been produced during DC comics most unimaginative and uninteresting time. I mean it’s a Batman character encyclopedia without Nightwing for goodness sake.

I’ll give this book 2 stars for some pretty pictures, but I’m donating it pretty soon.

[Romy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What it says on the tin.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much info on each person. DK has done better books in the past. Art is nice though.

[lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

awesome new information is always good, felt like there was a lot of stuff i didn’t really need to know in here, but maybe it’ll all be helpful at some point. idk. fun read though!

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not like the non-alphabetical nature of the book.
I also noticed some inconsistencies and typos but overall an enjoyable read.

[Liberty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish they would publish an updated version of this book.